With Last-Minute Ruling, Graham Spanier Evades Jumpsuit and ‘Hard Cell’

The warden was ready to receive Graham B. Spanier at Centre County Correctional Facility on Wednesday morning. But the former Penn State president, whose career was undone by his handling of a child sex-abuse case, won’t be there.

Hours before Spanier was slated to report to jail, a federal judge threw out the embattled leader’s 2017 criminal conviction for child endangerment. The judge agreed that prosecutors improperly applied an expanded child-endangerment law, from 2007, to hold Spanier accountable for his conduct in 2001. It was in that year that he failed to report that Jerry Sandusky, an assistant football coach, had been seen in a shower with a young boy in a Penn State locker room.

State prosecutors have three months to retry Spanier under Pennsylvania’s 1995 child-endangerment law, which was in place at the time of his alleged crime, the Associated Press reported.

The judge’s decision renders moot a precedent-setting verdict that held a college president accountable for another employee’s sex crimes.

Penn State Scandal

This selection of articles from The Chronicle’s archives looks back on the Jerry Sandusky scandal and its fallout at Pennsylvania State University.

• Seeking Closure in Verdict, Penn State Finds More Discord
• Spanier’s Conviction Highlights Lessons of Sandusky Scandal
• Guilty Verdict Puts a Dark Coda on Spanier’s Fall

Spanier was expected to report to the county jail, which is in Bellefonte, near his home in State College, by 9 a.m. on Wednesday. He would have traded his regular clothes for a yellow jumpsuit, the traditional garb for new inmates, and spent at least 24 hours in a “hard cell,” isolated from the general population.

The former president, who is 70, had been sentenced to two months of incarceration in the county jail, followed by two months of house arrest.

Had his sentence been imposed, Spanier was likely to end up in the minimum-security area of the jail, which also has medium- and maximum-security sections. In the minimum-security area, Spanier would have been incarcerated in what Christopher A. Schell, the warden, described as a “dormitory-style unit,” which contains as many as four beds, and inmates can roam within a limited area. This differs from the “hard cell,” which has two beds, a sink, a toilet, a desk, a seat, and a shut door.

When Spanier arrived, he would have been searched and given a medical questionnaire. He would have spent his first night in a hard cell, which is standard protocol. He would have been let out for a shower and an hour of recreation.

The next morning, Spanier would have been given a TB test and seen a counselor, which is part of the process of assessing whether an inmate can be released into the general population.

If he were placed in minimum security, Spanier would most likely have interacted with other prisoners who were serving three- to six-month sentences, Schell said. That would include people convicted of retail theft, criminal mischief, and DUI.

Spanier had already filed paperwork for work release, Schell said, which would have allowed him to leave the jail and report to a job within a matter of days.

If incarcerated, Spanier would have been the third Penn State administrator to serve jail time in connection with the Sandusky case. Timothy M. Curley, the university’s former athletics director, and Gary C. Schultz, a former vice president for finance and business, both took misdemeanor-level plea deals and served three months and two months, respectively.

Both Curley and Schultz were approved for work release, Schell said.

Inmates approved for work release can go to work, but they cannot order food or have visitors.

“If we find any of that, everything gets revoked,” Schell said.

Spanier would have been eligible to have one visitor each week. There would have been a barrier between them, and phones to their ears.

Updated (5/1/2019, 10:40 a.m.) with more on the judge’s rationale for throwing out Spanier’s conviction.

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.